The Adventure Begins

I can't decide if starting a blog almost a week into my trip is a negative thing (because I've slacked off thus far) or a positive one (because I'm actually doing a blog at all)! For better or for worse, though, here we go...

For anyone who has found themselves here and has no clue what this is about, a quick intro: I'm a pre-med biology undergraduate student and am currently on a month long medical mission trip/internship in Ghana, Africa. I love Jesus, I love medicine, I love Africa (so far), and I am SO excited to be here.

It all began on a crisp June morning in London, England. After traipsing through Europe for a month, I found myself facing my first trip to Africa! At the airport I was greeted with the lovely news that my flight was being put on a different aircraft—the first delay of many that day. Once past security I met up with my first team mate: Helen! Together (along with Staci, who was also on our flight, but whom we hadn’t connected with before the flight), we conquered boarding delays, at least 30 minutes sitting on the tarmac waiting to taxi for takeoff, a long flight “dodging some storms”, at least 40 minutes of circling the Accra airport in Ghana before landing, another hour of waiting for luggage, and FINALLY uniting with team members Lee and Rachel! Lee dropped us girls at the girls’ house, where we had a little celebration for Helen’s birthday (woot!), and all went to bed.

The first two days here in Ghana involved orientation to the program, as well as a tour through the clinic and offices of a partner of Reach Beyond. My fellow interns are amazing human beings, and it was great to get to know everyone a bit in those first few days. Our topic of conversation at meal times mostly focused (and still focuses) on the absolute magnificence of the food that is cooked for us at the mission. Our dearly loved Eva does the cooking and baking, and her praises were and are sung quite often by us interns! In addition to Eva’s cooking, we spend a lot of time enjoying the differences in the English of the UK interns vs. the US interns. While I won’t recount all of our hilarious moments and deep conversations, I will say that God truly knew what He was doing when he brought this team together. We’ve really meshed well as a unit. The ebb and flow of our personalities creates a really great dynamic that involves a lot of laughter, silliness, and singing!

The intern crew! L to R: John, Jules, me (Lauren), Helen, Rachel, Megan, and Chad!

 Our first day of medical work was done in Accra at the clinic of Reach Beyond’s partner. This area is extremely upscale from where we have been since and will be in the coming weeks. It served as a sort of “easing in” to the work for us. Our clinics consist of a team taking vitals and checking people in, the doctors who see the patients and prescribe medication, and the pharmacy which hands out medication and delivers instructions on how to take them. Additionally, we do children’s ministry each day. This consists of telling some Bible stories, playing lots of games with kids, and doing some handwashing/health type lessons. All in all this results in four “jobs” that we interns rotate through: vitals, shadowing doctors, pharmacy, or kids. That first day of clinic I was shadowing Dr. Steve, which was great! My family has known his for many years, so it’s been really special for me to be a part of this trip with him, especially as a student learning from someone to whom I’ve really looked up to in my life. 

Pharmacy! John counts meds while Rachel consults with Dr. Steve.

Before we began working that day we already had a fairly full waiting area. The Ghanaians waiting to be seen stood with us to say a prayer, which included a song of praise before praying. It was really powerful to hear all of those voices singing heartfelt praise to Jesus, and to be reminded that they are our brothers and sisters. After a very busy day (especially for our pharmacy folks!), we finished in the early afternoon, which left us time to shower and relax before another amazing dinner by Eva the Great. At Bible study that evening (which we do every Wednesday) we debriefed from the day, and we found it to be a very successful and smooth day—we gave care to almost 170 patients!

---At this point it is Wednesday evening (July 1). July 2-3 (yesterday and today) involved clinics in two rural areas near Accra. In the interest of keeping my blog posts readable, I’ll stop here and finish July 2-3 in the next post.---